Our Hour
by eighteenfortyone
Summary: A redhead claiming to be from the future changes the simple lives of Nazz and Edd in a second. (Time travelling adventure AU ft. human!Plank, Al, and Jim)


**Machi's Note:** Hello, reader! Machi here. I have a lot to mention here in the notes, but first I would like to thank you for considering to read this piece of work I've posted. Thank you!

So I would like to say that this story is heavily sci-fi based (time travelling, yay!) so if you are not interested in that, please give it a try anyways! Although it is heavily sci-fi based, I can promise you that you will get the share of fun and action and adventure and romance (yay!) that you want in a story. Because this entire story is centered around time travelling, some things will be mentioned and you will be utterly confused, but do not fret. I promise that I have already mapped out everything and all of your questions will be answered in later chapters (yes, this story will have multiple chapters.) Also to give you a head's up before you might be confused, there will be personified forms of inanimate character from EEnE in this story (Plank, Al, Jim) and Al will be referred to with the pronoun "ve/vis/ver"

I think that is all that I would like to mention before the first chapter. I've worked quite some time on this story, so please read and review and give as much criticism as you can. And last but not least, thank you and I hope you enjoy!

* * *

It supposedly started with a crash right outside her apartment.

Nazz, who was tired from working an extra shift at the job she only got because of her cousin, had just done her usual routine of dragging her feet to the living room, which wasn't a long distance from the entrance since she had managed to only get a small one bedroom, one bathroom apartment to herself. She tossed her bag and cell phone on the coffee table and then tossed herself on the hand me down sofa her aunt donated to "her favorite niece who was growing up to become a lady so quickly." The city life was what Nazz had dreamed of, a sense of independence and freedom to explore the lands of concrete and car traffic, but there was a loneliness that melted inside of her as the summer afternoon heat burned through her window and lit up the entire room.

She rolled over, stretching her right hand towards the ceiling, and then watched as her fingers grabbed the air in front of her.

"I deserve something good," Nazz spoke to herself, and then she sat up from where she was laying. "But nothing comes to you. You gotta make yourself come to it."

So she stood up from the sofa, running a hand through her hair and giving it a good shake so that the volume stayed, and began walking to her small kitchen where she knew that she had a tub of ice cream waiting in the freezer for her.

That was when the crash happened.

Nazz had barely opened her freezer when she heard it. The sound made her jump and her eyes widen, so she closed her freezer door and immediately rushed to her apartment window, her mind assuming that it might have just been a car crash or some kids playing a game of baseball on the street and broke another window.

But when she looked out of her window, there wasn't anything different from when she had just walked into the building earlier. She stepped away from her window and went to her patio balcony, where she would have a different perspective of the street, and then that's when she saw the source of the crash. Below her where the dumpster was located and most of the apartment residents dumped their garbage in, Nazz could see a person laying face down on the concrete. The trash cans were knocked over with the limbs of the redheaded boy hanging over them. He slowly got up, punching the cans away from him and pounding a fist to the ground to support himself up. Nearby him a red hat hung off a potted shrub, a backpack was opened and had its contents spilling out of it and across the pavement, and what looked like a small cactus had shards of its broken pot spread around it.

Nazz guessed that the boy was probably trying to hop the fence, didn't see the dumpster, and ended up crashing into all the trash cans with his things. She held onto the rails and hung her head down and called after him, "Hey! Are you okay?"

The boy somehow managed to stand up from where he had fallen. He looked around, dusting the dirt off his jeans, and then realized that everything he was carrying had fallen with him. He ignored Nazz's question and instead said in an exponentially increasing amount of frustration, "FUCK."

Nazz called down at him once more. "HEY!" This time he heard her and looked up at where she was standing on her balcony. Now that she had his attention, she told him, "Just... Just hold on a sec! I'll come down there and help you!"

Of course Nazz, who was just mentally self-ranting to herself about how tired she was, would still be willing to help anyone she saw needed it. She quickly ran off from her balcony, grabbing her keys from her bag and cell phone off of her coffee table, closed her apartment door behind her, and rushed down the street where she saw the boy. Like she told him to, he was still down there when she made it, but he was picking the red hat off of the potted shrub.

He put it on his head and that was when Nazz saw him, recognizing that rusty hair and freckle splattered face and dark green eyes from somewhere, but not knowing from where. It was as though she was reuniting with someone she had known for so long, but she could swear this was the first time she was meeting him. She kept staring at him and he stared back at her and, although Nazz was too busy trying to figure out where she had seen him before to notice, his face was beginning to glow with an embarrassed red from having a girl as effortlessly pretty as Nazz staring at him for so long. He broke the silence that their staring contest started and asked her, "Uh, you okay?"

Nazz shook her head and woke up from the strange daze. "No, man," she said with her usual friendly smile, and then asked back, "_You_ okay?"

He picked the potted shrub up and held it in one arm and then he pulled his face close to it and began to inspect its leaves. Nazz wasn't sure, but she was almost positive that she heard the boy start talking to the plant.

"Um, sorry about your stuff, dude." Nazz tried to make him stop talking to the shrub because it was starting to make her feel uncomfortable. She walked towards the backpack and started putting the fallen contents back inside, noticing that in the backpack were just a few clothes and a journal and some devices that she couldn't recognize, but knew for sure they weren't your typical iPhone or tablet. _Maybe he's trying to run away_, was all Nazz could assume when she zipped up his backpack and tried handing it to him. "Do you need help getting back..?"

"Getting back? Ha. Funny." It was a joke that Nazz didn't get, but she didn't ask him to explain. He continued, "Dude, we're so far back, there should be dinosaurs roaming around." He took his backpack from her and slung it over his shoulder. He had heard the sound of paper crinkling in his pocket when he did that, so he patted his pants pockets, trying to figure out which one the noise came from, and then pulled out from his right pocket what looked like a card and a note attached to it. He looked at the note, as though it was his first time looking at it, and then he looked up at the girl. "Are you Nazz?"

She wasn't sure how he knew, but she nodded.

A smirk appeared on his face as he nodded back at her. "Alright. Awesome." He handed Nazz the card and note. "This is for you," he said. "You and I are cool with each other, I think."

"Wait. What?" Nazz took a step back and tightened the grip on her cell phone because even as friendly as she was, she knew when people were too questionable for her to trust. "How do you know my name? Who are you? What do you mean we're cool with each other if this is the first time we've seen each other... I think? "

He saw that she hadn't taken the card and note from him. He frowned at that and furrowed his eyebrows, and then stretched his arm closer to her so that she would take the card and note away from him. "I don't know. Just take it already."

It was obvious that he wasn't going to not let her get away from it, so Nazz was left to just take it. She snatched it from his hand, which made him put both hands in his pockets and begin to inspect the setting they were in so that he wasn't left to watching her look at the card and note. The card was about the size of a driver's license, except instead of a photo and name and state and other identification information, it was a glossy white that shined different colors only in sections where light would reflect from it. Nazz held it between her fingers and used the summer sun's light to reflect off the card in different angles, watching as the words "Time Traveling License" and "Ken" appeared in a deep red within the glare on the card. She flipped the card over and took a look at the note that was attached to it. She read out loud, "As the original founder of Team KEN, you are now the new leader of Team KEN" and saw that her name was scribbled on the margin with an arrow stretched all the way to the word "you."

She looked at the other boy. She was confused. She asked him, "Are you Ken?"

"No. I'm Kevin."

Then who was Ken?

Kevin must of saw the confusion in Nazz's face because he tried to reassure her, "Uhh, okay. Don't freak on me. This is probably just going right over your head, but listen to me. We need your help. Right now. You are literally all that we have."

This still wasn't making any sense to Nazz.

There was very little she could trust from a guy who somehow already knew her name and was just talking to the shrub he was holding in his arm. She took another step back, ready to run back to her apartment and away and call for help, but when she took a step back, she felt her foot step on something that cracked. She turned around and looked at what she had accidentally stepped on, finding the pieces of the broken pot that the small cactus was originally in.

* * *

They were inside Nazz's apartment now, they as in everyone from Nazz to Kevin to the shrub he was talking to, and to the small cactus whose original pot was broken and was now replaced by an emptied coffee bin.

Kevin was sitting on the sofa, wondering why Nazz was standing near the doorway, but at the same time, something told him it was probably just because she felt safer there. The potted shrub was now on the coffee table and the small cactus was right beside it, the two plants becoming the subject to Nazz's questions.

"What do you mean that those plants are actually people?" Nazz interrogated, arms crossed and head slightly tilted. "And what do you mean that you three are traveling from the future? How are you even possible?"

"I am so possible," the other replied back. "Because they actually are people, they're the people who raised me. And we just traveled from the future right now. Did you not just see that?"

This is what their conversation consisted of the past minutes they spent together, Nazz asking a question and Kevin answering the question with very little information that helped her understand. Then that was when there was a knock on her front door and, since Nazz was already standing beside the door, quickly turned around and opened it.

"Salutations," a hesitant voice greeted her as she stepped aside and let him in. Bright eyes hiding under a dark hat peered into her apartment first, sighting the boy claiming to be from the future, and then entered. The new guest was very cautious and it showed in each step he took and every word he said. "Is this..?"

Nazz closed her front door and hid behind him, even though he was just as skinny as her, and then pointed at Kevin. "Yeah, that's him."  
Kevin took offense to the way Nazz was suddenly treating him and stood up from where he was sitting. "Yeah, Nazz, just invite people over and introduce me like I'm a guy at a freakshow or something. That's exactly why I time traveled for."

Nazz and her guest ignored Kevin and continued their conversation. Her guest asked her about everything that just happened, and then she explained in further detail about what she gathered from their earlier game of twenty questions. "Double D, somebody's trying to kill him and his... Plants." Nazz's voice was lowered, but still audible over Kevin's rant. "Something about a robot going to show up right at their place and try to kill them, so they traveled back in time right before that was going to happen to them..?"

"Just cause I'm from the future, doesn't mean I'm some object you guys can talk about like I'm not real-"

"But how would he know the exact moment when the robot would appear to try and exterminate them?" Nazz's guest saw too many holes in the story already. He still kept his eyes on the raving Kevin, but spoke over his shoulder to the hiding Nazz. "Why would he choose to travel back to this very moment to escape the robot, when he could have very well traveled back, or even forward, to any other time in history?"

Kevin saw that they were going to keep ignoring him, so he forced himself into their conversation. "Who even is this guy?" He walked from the sofa to where Nazz and her guest were standing, and then pulled Nazz's guest away from her by his shirt collars. "Oh, no. Wait a minute!" The amount of dry censure in Kevin's tone was obvious to everyone in the room. "I'm that thing that just traveled from the future, so I would already know who you are!" Kevin stared at Nazz's guest, eye to eye, and observed him, no, read him. "You are only here because while we were climbing the stairs up to her apartment, Nazz texted you to come over and help her because she was really confused, and still is, and as the smartest person she knows, you were honored with helping her become not confused." Nazz's guest was clearly becoming uncomfortable with the close distance between him and Kevin. "But you, being the most logical and reasonable person of this time, are also confused because everything still isn't making sense with the little information you know. So now I'm going to go back down to the sofa and explain everything to you as best as I can because right now, I'm going to barely realize that you're Double D-"

In the middle of his word vomit, the color in Kevin's face disappeared. The expression on his face transitioned to the wide eyed look, an almost mixture of surprise and praise and confusion. "You're Double D," Kevin repeated, and then took a step back. He was just complaining about Nazz and her guest for treating him like an object, but now he was acting as though the person in front of him was an object placed on top of a high pedastal. "You're Double D, Eddward, Edd with two d's, and you're..." He looked back to the shrub and cactus on the coffee table. "Seriously? That's it? That's Double D?"

Nazz understood the look Edd exchanged with her after witnessing Kevin addressing the plants as though they knew what he was saying. She slowly walked towards Kevin, patting one hand on his back and saying calmly, "Kevin, sweetie... You're acting crazy right now."

"No, I'm not." Kevin said. "Just... Just let me try to explain." He went to sit down on the sofa and Nazz sat down next to him, prepared to listen to whatever he was going to say next. Edd rose an eyebrow, thinking it odd that the rant Kevin just had seemed to be true and playing out in every word he ad just said, and then walked into the living room area and ready to listen to Kevin's explanation as well. Kevin took a deep breath, containing all of the energy he wanted to use being amazed that he was in the presence of Edd. "Okay. This is gonna be a lot of talk, more than I usually do, and it's not gonna seem like it'll make a lot of sense, but it will all make sense in the very end after everything has happened because, well, I guess that's what time travel does." He disclaimed, and then continued, "So basically, you," Kevin directed at Edd. "Raised these two, Al and Jim." He pointed at the shrub when he said Al, and he pointed at the cactus when he said Jim. "Then for some odd reason, these two were zapped to the future and they were the ones who raised me. Or well," Kevin grabbed his backpack and opened it, pulling out one of the devices Nazz recognized from earlier near the garbage. It was small and had a trigger and really just looked like a classy nerf gun to her. "They were zapped by this thing first, the objectifier, so they weren't plants when they raised me. They were people. I was not raised by plants. Now that would be weird."

As if plants turning into people _wasn't_ weird. He was explaining everything much slower, but it still was hardly helping Nazz understand anything. She looked at Edd who nodded at everything Kevin was saying, obviously entranced by the science fiction novel being laid before him. Nazz looked back at the plants named Al and Jim, and then back at Kevin, and then asked, "If that thing can really turn plants into people, why don't you prove it to us now?"

Kevin immediately put the objectifier back into his bag. "It does more than just plants. Just listen to its name. The objectifier. It turns objects to people and people to objects." When the device was safe in his backpack, he added, "Besides, I'm not going to do that. I'm not suppose to."

"Why not?" Nazz pouted.

"Because," Kevin put his hand in his backpack again, fumbling around his things for something else. "I read it in A.C.O. It says you figure out how to use it yourself. Besides, I'm suppose to ignore you and show you other stuff to distract you from the objectifier right now." At the mention of A.C.O., Kevin pulled out a journal and handed it to Edd. He looked through his backpack even more, and then pulled out a photo and handed it to Nazz. "If you want proof that the objectifier can change the forms of objects and people, just look at that."

The photo in Nazz's hands captured the faces of three people. The one on the left side of the photo had light hair, but not as bright as her's, and his hair was shaved in the sides and his bangs were long enough to cover half of the unamused expression in his eyes if he didn't push them aside. Next to him, and in the middle, was a person who Nazz couldn't tell was either a boy or girl, but there was a sweet smile on their face, and they had green hair that was neatly trimmed. Nazz looked at the last person in the photo, a horrified expression on the person's face, and then Nazz suddenly felt a strange wave of fear overcome her as she recognized the third person in the photo.

"Double D..." She slowly peeled her eyes away from the photo to look at her friend. "Why are you in this photo?"

He didn't reply. When she looked at him, he was completely engrossed by the journal that Kevin had handed him. The journal was worn down and Edd had to hold some of the front pages in place as he turned the pages. From where Nazz was sitting, she could see that the front cover had neatly printed across it, "A Casual Objectification" and written in the bottom right hand corner were the initials "E.M.V." Nazz, still scared and confused by the photo in her hands, rose her voice for Edd to hear,

"Why are you in this photo, Double D?" "_Why are you in this photo, Double D?_"

She stopped after hearing Edd speaking word for word with her. His eyes were still looking at the pages in the journal he was given. She pressed her lips together, and tried again.

"Double D, what are-" "_Double D, what are-_"

How could he know what she was saying before she even had thought of it?

"Dude, quit it-" "'_Dude, quit it,' Nazz had begun, but couldn't bring herself to finish. It was evident in her expression that the amount of confusion in her had heightened as soon as I began speaking simultaneously with her. I looked up from what I was reading in the journal and saw her eyes beginning to fill with tears..._"

Edd stopped reading from "A Casual Objectification" and looked at Nazz. Her eyes were beginning to fill with tears from how accurate everything was becoming. Edd glanced at the photo that was in Nazz's hand and confirmed that it was him in it, though, he couldn't remember taking the photo or even recognize the two other people in it. The journal he held in his hands was most definitely written with his handwriting, and the initials written in the corner of the front cover were his. He looked at the potted shrub and cactus sitting in the coffee bin on the coffee table. "Of all the ludicrous coincidences before us," Edd said slowly, still unable to completely understand everything before him. "The queerest one is that I am growing my own shrub and cactus in my home by the names of Al and Jim right now."

"More than one of you in the same time period?" Kevin gave a crooked smirk to the plants on the coffee table, and then lightly fist bumped the shrub and coffee bin of the cactus. "Choice." He looked back at Nazz and Edd. "So do you believe in all this time travel stuff now?"

* * *

It was no surprise that it wasn't enough to make Nazz and Edd completely sold on the idea that Kevin really did travel back in time to escape from some robot attack on him and his plants. For all Nazz and Edd knew, this could be some cruel prank that was being taken way too far, but at the same time, neither wanted to admit that they couldn't help but want to believe in this entire thing for even a little bit. Nazz, who always believed in the best of everyone, could sense the truth in Kevin's words and could tell he wasn't lying in anything he was saying. Edd was truthfully and completely enamored by the possibility that there was somebody who could prove that time was not just a linear distance from point A to B, and that there was such technology that can change the form of one's human appearance, but he didn't want to admit it just yet. Neither he nor Nazz wanted to admit it yet, so when Nazz suggested "_Why don't we compare your Al and Jim to his Al and Jim to see if they're really the same?_" Edd immediately agreed so they can at least have one more proof and reason to believe in all this time traveling nonsense.

Kevin groaned. It was a summer day in the city and just after crashing into some garbage cans and into the floor, he was now stuffed in the back seat of a taxi that was hailed by Nazz to take the three of them to Edd's apartment blocks away. He sat in the dreaded middle seat with his backpack on his lap while Nazz and Edd in the seats on either side, with Edd holding Al and Nazz holding Jim, to ensure that they wouldn't lose Kevin if he ever decided to "_try and run away into the 1500s or something uncool like that._" "_Oh, but the 1500s were a fantastic time, Nazz. In fact, 1593 was when Galileo invented the thermometer._" "_Of course only you, Double D, would know when the thermometer was invented._"

If Kevin had a thermometer at that moment, he was sure that it would have bursted because of the combined heat inside the taxi and frustration boiling inside of him. "Have we even moved for the past thirty minutes?"

"Only twenty-seven minutes and forty-two seconds have passed since we stopped moving," Edd corrected. "Forty-three, forty-four, fourty-five..."

Nazz rolled down the window beside her and stretched her neck so she could look outside. It looked as though all of the cars in front of them for the next two blocks, perhaps even more, hadn't moved. "Maybe there's a parade or something..." She mumbled. She saw pedestrians running up the sidewalk in excitement. "Excuse me!" Nazz called out. One of them paused in their rush and looked at the source of the voice. She asked him, "Do you know what's all the buzz happening up the street?"

"There's some guy in the corner... He's got a robot that moves and everything and he's selling it for a couple grand, maybe even hundreds."

After his explanation, the pedestrian continued running towards the direction he was talking about. Kevin rose an eyebrow. He elbowed Edd in the side, emphasizing on the single word that the pedestrian had mentioned, reminding him what he and his plants were running away from in the future. "Ro... Bot."

Even Nazz couldn't help but giggle at the boy. Edd, who did not appreciate getting jabbed in the ribs, rolled his eyes and reached into his own bag for exact change to give the taxi driver. Once paid, the three stumbled out of the vehicle and onto the street, walking around cars and onto the sidewalk as Edd gave universal signs of apology to drivers for walking in front of them. He had to hold on tight to Al as he tried to keep up with Nazz and Kevin following the crowd towards the supposed robot that they were told about. After a few blocks, the crowd thickened, and Kevin had to link arms with Nazz and Nazz had to hold onto Edd's messenger bag strap to make sure they wouldn't lose each other. Kevin had broad shoulders and didn't mind shoving people out of the way, even kicking a child or two, so the three made it within close distance to the show to see what was happening in no time.

"No way!" Nazz turned her face towards Edd and asked over the crowd, "Isn't that Eddy?"

There, standing on the street corner like some circus seal rounding up its next audience, was Eddy, the old friend that Edd and Nazz could recall doing just about the same thing when they were younger. He was calling for attention, using that unforgettable voice of his, and he was getting it. The crowd around him kept murmuring all around and throwing questions at Eddy and the robot that stood next to him. It stood tall, about Kevin's height, and it had the basic shape of a human, but its surface was clear so that golden clockwork and gears could be seen winding within it. Even from the distance that Edd was standing, he could recognize his own works in the robot, that this was his mechanical design, that he was working on the same type of robot in his own home, except for the fact that the only difference between his robot and the robot before him was that Eddy's robot wasn't just drafts of paper.

With one last shove, Kevin broke through the crowd and walked right up to the robot. Eddy saw this and stopped in his attention grabbing speech. "What do you think you're doing?" He snarled. Eddy was getting upset at Kevin and it showed through how red his face was turning. "This isn't a display for a museum- if it was, you have to pay to see it this up close."

Kevin ignored Eddy and continued to inspect the robot. He took the hat off to scratch the top of his head, and then placed his hat back on.

Nazz let go of Edd as he came closer to stand beside Eddy. He held on to Al in one arm as his other hand tightened its grip around the strap of his messenger bag. "Eddy, where did you get this?"

"What're you talking about, Double D?" Eddy stared back at his friend since childhood with a confused expression. "This isn't your's. My Big Bro gave this to me this morning from the sweet job he has now."

"No, this is my robot, I am positive. Except..." Edd felt the back of his throat beginning to dry. "How... I'm still drafting a finished design and have yet to perfect the A.I. for this model... And how could your brother have given you a completed model if I haven't even finished it yet?"

Eddy just shrugged his shoulders, not wanting to burden himself with unnecessary thinking since that was usually left for Edd to do. "I don't know and I don't care. I'm just trying to make some money off of this and I can tell I'm gonna get _a lot_."

During their conversation, the golden clockwork within the robot were slowly brought to a halt until the entire thing was still from the inside. Kevin took a step back, not sure what was happening now. Suddenly, the head of the robot jerked in several directions in a single second, a spastic error within its system, looking like a random blur above its robotic body. Nazz saw this and walked up to Kevin, nudging the back of his arm with her shoulder to get his attention. "Kevin, what's going on with the robot?"

The robot stopped moving and it returned to its first position, a still life facing forward with its golden gears winding within itself again. Then slowly, ever so slowly, its head moved so that the front of it was towards Nazz. Although its head was just a clear surface without a face, it felt like it was staring directly as the cactus that Nazz was holding in her arms. Nazz held tighter to the coffee bin that Jim was resting in.

The clear surface of the robot was suddenly lit with a red light that began to blink rapidly. "CODE RED. CODE RED." A strange, staccato voice blared out from the robot from where a mouth would be if it had a face. "UNLICENSED TIME TRAVELLING. MUST PRESENT TIME TRAVELLING LICENSE WITHIN FIFTEEN SECONDS."

"What the-" Before Kevin could even finish his sentence, the crowd that formed all around Eddy and his robot auctioning show began to scatter. The fear of futuristic technology taking over the human race was happening before them in a way that nobody understood. There were screams from people running into each other and from people warning others that the robot was going to kill them. Even Eddy, the one that was claiming ownership of the robot just earlier, shoved Edd to the side so that he could run.

"FIFTEEN. FOURTEEN. THIRTEEN..." The robot announced the countdown out loud. "TWELVE. ELEVEN. TEN..."

Kevin turned to Nazz and shouted, "The card! Show him the freakin' card!"

"NINE. EIGHT. SEVEN. SIX..."

Nazz shoved Jim into Kevin's hands and with shaking hands, pulled out her wallet. She leafed through old receipts as quickly as she could until she could find the glossy white card that Kevin gave her just earlier that day.

"FIVE. FOUR. THREE. TWO..."

"Here!" Nazz couldn't help but yell out loud as she closed her eyes shut and flashed the card in front of the robot's head.

It didn't have eyes, but the robot's head scanned the card Nazz showed it as it moved left and jerked right for a few moments, like a typewriter, and then it stopped and it flashed red no longer. When seconds had past since it moved, Nazz slowly opened her eyes and looked back at the robot, and then at a still frozen from shock Kevin. The city people that were once around them were still running away from the scene as fast as they could and Eddy was no longer to be seen.

Suddenly, the head of the robot began to jerk around again. This time instead of stopping and facing Jim, it was directly facing towards Kevin. The clear surface of the robot returned to flashing red and it repeated in its stiff voice, "CODE RED. CODE RED. UNLICENSED TIME TRAVELLING. MUST PRESENT TIME TRAVELLING LICENSE WITHIN FIFTEEN SECONDS. FIFTEEN. FOURTEEN..."

Nazz quickly looked at Kevin. "Don't you have another one of those card things?"

"THIRTEEN. TWELVE. ELEVEN..."

"No," Kevin's attention kept switching between Nazz and the robot. "I got that card from you and you only gave one card and you decided to only give it to yourself."

"TEN. NINE. EIGHT..."

Edd barely managed to push past running citizens and toward Nazz and Kevin, also wide eyed and confused about what happened. Edd's voice, although small from everything that was happening around them, asked, "What is going on?"

"SEVEN. SIX. FIVE..."

Kevin looked at Edd, and then the robot, and then at Nazz. Nazz looked at Edd, and then at the robot, and then at Kevin, and then at the robot, and then at Edd once more. She took a deep breath and explained to Edd as fast as she could: "The robot's freaking out cause appaz you need a license to time travel and I showed it a card but I guess it only worked for Jim because now it needs one from Kevin and oh my god does that mean Al will need one too?"

"FOUR. THREE..."

Edd, somehow comprehending everything that was happening in those few seconds, quickly looked at Kevin. "You don't have another one of those licenses?"

"TWO..."'

Kevin looked at Edd and hurriedly explained once more, "No, I got the card from Nazz and Nazz only gave one card and Nazz only wanted to give it to herself."

"ONE..."

The robot lifted an arm. It grabbed Kevin by the fabric of his shirt above his chest. The grip it had on his shirt was so tight that it began to carry Kevin off the ground with its single hand. Kevin's eyes stared at the faceless robot wide, watching as the golden gears within it continued to move. He called out loud to Edd and Nazz, "Guys..?"

Edd watched the robot in horror as the distance between Kevin and his shadow on the floor grew larger and larger. Then in an almost yelp, Edd could barely get himself to say, "D-do something!"

Nazz, being the only one of the group who actually learned karate, acted first. As taught in her self-defense class when encountering a harasser, she kicked the side of the robot's knee and then used a knife hand strike to attack the side of the robot's neck. If it was a human and not a robot, a kick to the knee would have made him lose balance and the force she used to hit the side of his neck would have hit either a carotid artery or jugular vein. The only problem here was that what Nazz hit was a robot and not a human.

But somehow, being hit did stun the robot, seeing as it stopped lifting Kevin off the ground and froze.

Suddenly, it dropped Kevin, causing the red haired boy to fall on his bottom. The robot slowly turned its head to face Nazz who no longer had any will inside of her to try and attack the robot anymore. The robot now blurted out, "UNDER ATTACK. MUST ELIMINATE SOURCE OF ATTACK."

Kevin scrambled back on his feet. He shoved Jim into Edd, forcing the thin boy to now hold both Al and Jim in shaking arms, and then returned his attention back to the robot. "Hey, loser!" Before the robot could try and grab Nazz, Kevin placed all his weight into his shoulder and rammed himself into the robot.

Being hit once again stunned the robot. Just like it did before, it slowly turned its head to face Kevin this time and blurted out, "UNDER ATTACK. MUST ELIMINATE SOURCE OF ATTACK."

Kevin took off his backpack and quickly placed it into Nazz's arms. He looked at her straight in the eyes and directed her with as solid as he could make his voice, "Take care of Al and Jim like they did me," right before he turned around and started running. The robot once again tilted its head in every direction within a few seconds before it located where Kevin ran towards, and then began after him.

Nazz looked back at Edd. "C'mon, Double D, we gotta go!" Her voice yelled as she held her arms tighter around Kevin's backpack and prepared to start running.

Edd was holding onto the potted shrub and cactus in his arms. Even though he was visibly terrified of what was going on, he took a deep breath to calm his thoughts before making a decision and looking back at Nazz. "We can't leave him."

"But-" Nazz was scared too, there was no denying that, and all she wanted to do was return back to her apartment and onto her sofa to eat that tub of ice cream that was just waiting for her. But Edd was right. For a story they have yet to completely understand, the one thing they did understand was that they were both somehow too invested in this redhaired time traveler and his plants to leave them behind. She stared back at Edd and nodded, agreeing with his decision.

"There should be something, anything, in his backpack that he brought back from the future that would help," Edd suggested.

Nazz unzipped it and stuffed her hand inside, rummaging through Kevin's clothes and other belongings. Her fingers felt a smooth metal and when she pulled it out, she was holding the small, nerf gun looking device that Kevin showed them earlier. She stared at Edd with a look waiting for an approval if what she found was good enough.

What she had pulled out was what Kevin introduced as the objectifier, what supposedly changes Al and Jim from being plants to human and vice versa. Not even sure if that device from the future would be able to help in any way, Edd shrugged his thin shoulders. "Now let's go save the day."

* * *

It was easy when Kevin shoved through the crowd to see what the commotion was about after finding out that there was something happening with a robot, but now that the robot decided to scare everyone and cause running mobs of scared citizens scrambling this way and that, shoving through the same crowd of people became much harder.

He continued running, lucky that he had always been athletic and had a strong stamina. Not even knowing his way around a city that he was in for the first time in his life, Kevin reached the end of a city block sidewalk and turned the corner. He held his hands in fists and used his arms to shove away anyone that might have been running in the opposite direction so that if they crashed into him, they would be the ones to move to the side and he could keep running forward. Kevin looked behind him and could tell that the robot was maybe fifteen yards behind him because unlike Kevin, the robot was not running or shoving people. It was walking in a speed slow enough for people to recognize it and run the other direction. The robot did not shove people out of the way and kept its faceless head directed toward Kevin. The robot was after Kevin and only Kevin, and attacking other people was not its objective.

Kevin looked in front of him and saw a sign for a public parking garage that was on the next left. He ran towards the sign, thinking that maybe hiding in a parking garage would help stall time from the robot, but then when he turned left, he crashed into a stone statue that was randomly placed in the middle of the city.

The crash caused both Kevin and the stone statue to fall backwards. Kevin rubbed the pain out of his arm and when he looked in front of him, he realized that what he ran into was not a stone statue, but another person. The other boy had dark skin, but the dirt on his arms and hands were still clearly visible. There was a light skim of hair growing on his bald head and his head might as well have been made out of stone because he didn't feel as much pain as Kevin did after crashing into each other.

"Shit, sorry." Kevin stood up from where he fell, now getting shoved this way and that by the people running past him.

The other boy ignored Kevin and stayed on the floor scrambling for something he lost, causing some people to trip over him as they ran. He found what he was looking for, a wooden board with a worn down face drawn into it with red and blue crayon, and then he looked at Kevin. Even though everyone around them was moving as fast as they could, the other boy took a long moment to stare at Kevin, his eyes first becoming wide with recognition as he pointed at Kevin and said, "Hey! We know you!", and then his eyes starting to squint as a rage gradually overcame the boy. The boy held his wooden board over his head and began to strike Kevin with him as he shouted, "What did you do with Rolf? Give back Rolf!"

Kevin did not know who the boy or wooden board was. He did not know Rolf was. Kevin could only defend himself by using his arms to block his face from getting hit by the wooden board. The redhead shouted back at the other, "What the hell, man? Quit it!"'

From behind him, Kevin could hear the screams getting louder. As he defended himself from getting hit by what was in front of him, he turned his attention behind him and could see that the robot was getting closer and closer. He needed to get away and fast.

When the boy pulled his wooden board back over his own head to strike Kevin again, Kevin quickly stopped defending himself to reach over and grab the wooden board out of the other boy's hands. The other boy swung his arms forward to hit Kevin, but then realized that he no longer had his wooden board anymore. He looked at his hands, and then at Kevin. "Hey! Give back Plank!"

At the sound of the name, Kevin held the wooden board in his hands and looked straight at its crayon drawn eyes, confused as to why someone he knew from the future was a wooden board in this moment of time. "Plank?"

There was another scream. The robot was getting closer.

Kevin didn't have time to question Plank or the other boy who was carrying him. He held tight onto Plank in one hand and then grabbed the other boy with his other hand, dragging them into the parking structure. The other boy was struggling to release himself from Kevin's grip, but Kevin was strong and forced him to keep running beside them. They ran past parked cars and cars trying to drive out of the parking structure and into the city traffic. They were in the part of the parking garage labeled 1-K. Kevin swung the other boy behind a parked car and they both hid behind it, taking a seat right there on the ground and hoping that the robot wasn't anywhere near them.

"Let go of me!" The other boy yelled. Kevin obeyed and stopped holding onto the other boy, and the first thing the other boy did was grab the wooden board out of Kevin's other hand. "I shoulda believed Plank in the very beginning. You're a jerk." The other boy lifted the wooden board above his head to hit Kevin again. "Bring Rolf back!"

"Stop it!" Before Kevin could get hit again by the wooden board, he knocked it out of the other boy's hands. The wooden board fell to the garage ground and slid across until it hit the pillar labeled 1-L.

The other boy immediately stood up to run away from Kevin and towards where Plank landed. "Don't worry, buddy! I got you!"

Kevin watched the other boy in both anger and confusion. "How can you act like this when there's a robot from the future trying to kill-"

Before Kevin could even finish his sentence, there was a shadow being casted upon him. He looked to his side and his eyes widened when he found the robot standing right beside the car he was hiding behind. Kevin stood up on his feet but right when he was going to run from the robot, it extended its arm and this time it wrapped its fingers, not on his sweater, but around his neck.

The redhead gagged when it started to slowly lift him above the ground again. The air escaped from his lungs faster than he expected and the only thing he could hear was the thumping of his own heartbeat throughout his body as the robot's grip pushed against the carotid artery and jugular vein in his neck. He was trying hard to keep his eyes open, but a vignette was forming around his vision, beginning to take over everything he was seeing into a black blanket.

A voice cried out something from a nearby distance, but a high pitch frequency took over Kevin's hearing. From where he last remembered the other boy being, he saw another person now standing next to him. The other person was tall and thin and had light hair, though not as bright as Nazz's, and his hair was shaved in the sides and his bangs were long enough to cover half of the unamused expression in his eyes if he didn't push them aside. The blonde saw Kevin and then, for some off reason, began to limp towards Kevin and the robot. Kevin opened his mouth to say something but only incomprehensible consonances came out.

The blonde was now standing behind the robot. He lifted a limp arm and placed his index finger on the back of the robot's neck, and then traced a circle, and then a line straight through his traced circle.

In an instant, the robot no longer was flashing a red light through its clear surface and all of the golden gears within it stopped. The grip it had around Kevin's throat loosened and it dropped him to the ground. The robot became lifeless and inanimate, exactly how Kevin liked it.

Kevin coughed from trying to inhale too much air back into his lungs at once. He wiped the spit off the corner of his mouth with his sleeve, and then from the ground looked up at who saved him. The blonde, now that Kevin had a better view of him, was bruised and bleeding. Red dripped from his nose and mouth and there were already stains that dried on his shirt. From his arms and face, there were bruises that varied from black and blue and purple and fresh yellow and red. He hardly looked like the person that was in the photo Kevin showed Nazz. It was as if the blonde was on the verge of death, but was somehow still living and stuck in that state.

"Plank?" Despite the fact that the blonde's face was beaten to almost be unrecognizable, Kevin knew who he was. "What happened to you?"

Plank, with a look in his eyes as dead as he should have been, stared back at Kevin. He slowly bent his knees down to a squat, an action that he pained through gritted teeth, and then grabbed Kevin by his collars so that he was closer to his face. With the small distance between them, Kevin could see every detail in Plank's face and where bruises formed from where he was punched and how the ends of his blonde bangs were colored with his own blood. "What happened to me?" A soft voice came out, but it trembled with a sort of underlying rage you could only sense from a silent storm. "You happened. Or rather, you will happen."

Kevin wanted to look away but couldn't. "I don't get it. What do you mean?"

"You ruined my life and took away the only person I loved because," Plank explained slowly and vaguely. "I ruined your life and took away the only person you loved."

A flash of light suddenly outlined Plank and the beated human that was holding Kevin close to his face transformed back into the wooden board with the face drawn onto it with crayon. It fell to the ground, causing an echo through the parking garage, and Kevin found it eerie being stared at by its circle eyes and smile.

"Stay away from him!" The voice of the other boy yelled as he ran towards them, grabbing the wooden board and running around the turned off robot and out of the parking structure.

Slowly Kevin returned back up on his feet, when he was suddenly enveloped by an embrace. He looked down at the person in front of him and when she stopped burying her face into his chest to look back up at him, something about seeing the smile on Nazz's face made him feel better.

She let go of him and playfully hit him in the shoulder with a fist. "Dude!" She exclaimed. "That was so bomb! Let's do it again!"

Kevin laughed at Nazz. He looked past her and saw that walking towards them was Edd, still holding both Al and Jim in his arms. The two boys exchanged a smile, though not as wide as the one of Nazz's face, they understood the joy and relief in each other's expressions.

"Wait a minute," Kevin took a step back. He looked at Nazz, and then at Edd, and then at the robot, and then back at the other two once more. "What just happened?"

Nazz balanced herself on the heels of her feet as she excitedly revealed her other hand that was holding the objectifier. "Shot Jonny's wood buddy. Turns out that turning Plank human would help turn off the robot."

Kevin knew that Plank would know how to turn off the robot, but he still didn't understand. He asked, "How did you know?"

This time, Edd was the one who explained. He somehow managed to hold both Al and Jim with one arm as he used his other hand to open up his messenger bag and reach for something inside. Edd took out a worn down journal with the title "A Casual Objectification" neatly written across the front of it. He replied to Kevin, "I read it in the A.C.O."

* * *

The day was near its end, but it was hard to tell in Edd's work room. Within his apartment he had an extra room that he dedicated to drafting and writing and creating and building. This room was the place he considered his work space and he had control of everything in it, including the amount of daylight that would be allowed inside. The curtains were drawn and the only light that lit the room was a desk lamp. He was recording everything he just experienced in an empty notebook he kept as fast as he could.

It had been hours from the chaos that happened in the city and there were still news reporters interviewing witnesses on the television. Edd, Nazz, and Kevin took the robot with them and tried to hide it as well as they could, putting Edd's cardigan on it and using some of Kevin's spare clothes from his backpack to finish his outfit and Nazz using her makeup to create a face on its empty head. They still were travelling to Edd's apartment but didn't hail a taxi this time since the traffic became even worse, so they were reduced to dragging along the comically costumed robot along the sidewalks and crossing their fingers that no one would recognize that the robot that was part of their group was the robot that everyone in the city was running away from.

Somehow Edd should have expected this, but nobody even took a second look at them.

Edd placed his pen down on his desk and neatly aligned it with the notebook he was writing in. With the series of events that just happened, he thought it would be best to record and remember everything with as much details as he could and he knew that this would be the only time his memory would be freshest. That's what he was doing in the work room of his apartment while outside in his living room were Kevin and Nazz, proudly telling each other how cool they were and how they stopped the robot and how they felt like new superheroes. They offered Edd to join them, but Edd kindly rejected. He told them it would be best if he also spent some time to examine the robot more to make sure that it was really off and to understand it more in case it came back on.

He rolled his desk chair towards the robot, which was still dressed in its ridiculous disguise and donned Nazz's makeup on its face, and took a moment to observe it. He then rolled back to his desk and to the bookshelf he had next to it, first looking closely, and then finding easily because of his compulsive need to organize everything in alphabetical order, another notebook he had. Edd removed the book from its snug placement on his bookshelf and flipped through its pages. He stood up from his seat and looked back at the robot from where he was standing.

Everything that he was working on and all the designs that he made in that book matched the robot exactly. Since this robot came from the future, would this mean that Edd's work would actually be completed and work perfectly? But the robot from the future had only reacted when it discovered time travelers without a license. Exactly how far into the future did it take to have his robot created?

Still holding his book with the drafts of the robot's design, Edd walked over to a work table that had all of Kevin's devices from the future laid out. Although Kevin was at first weary about letting Edd take all of his things, he trusted Edd and let him. In front of Edd was the A.C.O., the objectifier, and a third device that Kevin claimed was what helped him travel through time.

Edd gently picked up the third device and held it in front of him. Since the only light in the room came from his desk lamp, he couldn't see every detail in it, but he was able to see the few buttons placed on it and the small engravings next to the buttons that labeled each of their uses.

With the time traveling device in one hand and the book of his drafts of the robot's design in the other, Edd traveled across his room and back to the robot. He stared directly at the robot's eyeliner drawn eyes and fake eyelashes. "How are you even possible?"

And then, accidentally, Edd pressed a button on the time travelling device, and he disappeared from present time.

* * *

Edd opened his eyes, not even remembering of closing them. He still held the time traveling device in one hand and the book of his drafts of the robot's design in another, and when he looked to his side, he realized that he was laying with his back on the ground and that the dressed up robot was too, just a few feet away from him. He scrambled up to his feet, trying to understand where he was.

He was no longer in the work room of his apartment but instead what looked like a small living room in the middle of a scene that already started. Edd, who just accidentally time traveled without realizing it, looked in front of him and found five pairs of eyes staring wildly back at him. There in front of him appeared to be Kevin and Nazz with two green haired people and... Himself?

"What-" Edd couldn't comprehend what was going on. "How am I- What- Who-"

"Double D, behind you!" The shorter of the green haired people pointed past Edd.

When Edd turned around, he was faced by a robot, not the one that he had time traveled with, but one that was blinking red and counting down in its stiff voice, "FOUR. THREE. TWO..."

Edd opened his mouth to yell, but only a small yelp came out. Remembering how he witnessed Plank turn off the robot in the parking structure, Edd ran around the robot. He held the time traveling device and his book of drafts with one arm while he used his other hand to retrace what Plank did on the first robot's neck. First a circle, and then a line straight through it.

Just as the first robot did after Plank shut it off in the parking structure, this robot turned off as well. Edd released a sigh of relief, and then looked back at his companions. Still confused about where he was but happy that no danger seemed to be apparent anymore, Edd awkwardly tried to find the right words to say. "Well, um, it was nice... Helping all of you," and then he looked at the other him standing next to Kevin. "Or, I mean, all of us."

Not knowing what else to say, Edd pressed another button on the time traveling device, hoping that it would lead him back to where he wanted.

* * *

The day was near its end, but the rays of the sun still peeked past the edge of the world and lit up the silhouette of the city's skyline. At the steps of an apartment building and not wanting to separate from each other was a blonde and his neatly trimmed green haired friend.

"Plank, I'm serious," The green haired friend had pale skin that were colored with rosy cheeks and pink lips. Around vis neck was a strap that was attached to a Polaroid camera, a device that was created so many centuries ago that it was considered more than just vintage in the time period that these two were in. "If you need a place to stay, you can just come up and crash with us. You know I wouldn't mind."

Plank wore a cardboard tan uniform with a stiff collar and starchy pants. Ever since he accepted extra shifts to earn more money, he'd been using every second he could to see his friend. "I don't want your pity," Plank crossed his arms above his chest and looked away. When he heard no reply from his friend, Plank looked back at ver. Although Plank was always known to appear stoic, ve could recognize the hint of emotion in his voice. Plank told ver, "Look, I just... I don't want to be a burden to you. I can already tell that I'm going to be getting a promotion back at Time Travelling Security soon, I can just feel it. And then I'll be able to help you two raise Kevin more. I promise."

Ve smiled. Ve stepped closer to Plank and wrapped vis arms around Plank, holding him as close to ver as ve could and pressing the camera between them and into their chests. Plank held ver back and the change in pace of his breathing make ver feel even happier.

And then suddenly, there was a crash. Plank let go of ver and stepped in front of ver, protecting ver from whatever made the crash.

Just a few feet away, was a thin boy with his lanky limbs sprawled all around him on the sidewalk. He had a dark hat over his head and the shirt he was wearing now had dirt from where he was laying. Near him on the floor was a metal device and a book and what looked like a naked mannequin with a clear surface that revealed golden gears and clockwork within in.

Ve looked over Plank's shoulder and felt vis jaw drop. Gently pushing Plank away from in front of ver, ve asked out loud, "Double D?"

Edd opened his eyes and sat up, rubbing his back in pain. He stood up from where he landed and looked at the person that called for him. Edd blinked twice and then rubbed his eyes, trying to recognize the two people near him. He pointed at the blonde and comprehended, "Plank." But then Edd pointed at the green haired person and realized he didn't know who ve was. "I'm sorry, but, um...?"

The green haired person stepped forward and a smile revealed white teeth on vis face. "It's me, Double D. You're the one who raised me." It was a reunion that was long overdue. "It's me, Al."

Edd stared back at the person claiming to be the shrub that he was growing back home. If this person claiming to be Al was the actual Al that Edd was growing back at his home in the present, then was Edd in the future right now? But then how did Al travel to this point of time by himself?

"This is so exciting!" Al exclaimed to Plank. And then an idea lit up in vis mind and ve held up the camera hanging around vis neck. "We need to take a picture." Ve looked at Plank with the eyes of a rabid fan. "We have to take a picture with Double D."

Al grabbed Plank by the arm and dragged him to stand next to Edd, even though Al knew that Plank hated taking pictures. The three stood next to each other, with Plank on Al's right and Edd on Al's other side, and Al held the camera backwards and extended vis arms in front of them. Right before Al snapped the photo, Edd barely realized that the photo that Al was taking was the exact photo that Kevin would take out of his backpack to show Nazz. Knowing that horrified him in ways that he did not expect it to.

The photo began to emerge out of the Polaroid camera and instantly develop. As Al and Plank watched the picture become visible, Al held back a snicker. Even Plank rose both eyebrows and snarkly remarked to Edd, "Nice expression."

Edd looked around him and picked the time travelling device up from the ground. He returned back to Al and Plank and desparately told him, "I need to return to my time- the time I'm suppose to be in."

Plank saw the device in Edd's hands. "Do you even have a license to time travel?"

Al lightly hit Plank on the chest. "You're not on work hours right now, Plank." Al rolled vis eyes, then ve looked at the device and pointed at a button at the top right corner. "That's like your undo button. Press it and it'll take you back to the time you were in before this one."

Before Edd could pressed the button, Al held onto his arm and stopped him. Al said, "Don't worry, Double D. Kevin's doing just fine."

Edd wasn't sure what ve meant, but he smiled at vim. Al let go of Edd's arm and Edd pressed the button twice, suddenly disappearing from that time frame.

After Edd disappeared, Plank's attention drifted to the robot and book of drafts of the robot's design that Edd left behind.

* * *

Edd was sure that he opened his eyes, but everything was still dark. He turned around and his eyes slowly adjusted to the dimly lit room he was in, his work room in his apartment. He saw on his desk that the lamp was still the only source of light on and the open notebook he was previously writing in and his pen was still aligned next to it. How much time passed while he was gone?

He rushed out of his work room and into his living room. There on the couch were Kevin and Nazz engaged in a loud conversation, and on the dining table in just the other room was a potted shrub and a cactus that was in a coffee bin.

"Dude, I know right? " Kevin was swinging his arms and hands widely around him as he and Nazz kept repeating the story. "And then it was like woah, and I thought I was gonna die, but then you did the thing and then everyone was like ahh no, and then-" He only stopped talking when he saw Edd enter. Both he and Nazz looked at Edd, slightly confused as to why their friend looked so frazzled.

Nazz was the first to say something. "You okay, Double D?" She asked. "Looks like you ran out of more breath writing in your notebook than we did talking to each other."

Kevin's attention drifted to the time traveling device that was still in Edd's hand. He didn't say anything, but he somehow understood. Kevin looked back at Edd and smirk grew on the side of his face. "So do you believe in all this time travel stuff now?"

Edd released a heavy breath. He then cleared his throat and answered: "Yes, very much so."


End file.
